Recap - Creating a Niche Tourism Trail

During last week's Wednesday Webinar Jessie McNaughton owner of Lift Bridge Yarn and creator of the NY Fiber Trail presented her topic: Creating a Niche Tourism Trail. 

Some insights from the webinar:

• Background on Jessie 
  • Knitting since she was 10 years old 
  • Owns a yarn shop in Fairport, NY 
  • There is a big yarn community across the state
    • They like to travel and find unique local yarn shops to find new products 
  • She identified that it was hard to find these small yarn shops and so she created the NY Fiber Trail 
• What is it?
  • The NY Fiber Trail is a database of yarn shops, fiber farms, yarn mills, and textile studios in NY state
  • The trail is open May 1st to Oct 31st - 78 businesses across the state participate 
  • There is a map on their website - you can plan your trip from the web page 
  • Get a passport at any participating shop, each region has a page and you can get a stamp at each shop 
  • Send in passport to win prizes that shops have donated / gift cards 
  • Each business on the trail has also provided places to stay, eat and activities to do during their trip 
• Inspiration
  • Saw how people liked the history trails, wine trails, craft brewing trails, etc. in the state
  • Inspired by the Maine Yarn Trail 
• Making a trail
  • 1st - Why should you? 
    • What do the customers already do?
    • Why should other businesses come on board?
    • What is your goal for the businesses - hers was increasing awareness & help rural fiber farms increase sales and visitors 
  • 2nd - How are you going to find the businesses?
    • How are you going to get in touch?
    • Collect info?
    • Marketing? 
    • And of course, funding 
    • How to overcome roadblocks - ask for help!
  • 3rd - Put it together 
    • Have a timeline of when you want it to start & end, what you need before launch, ordering supplies, get in touch with businesses, deadline for sign ups 
    • Keep it simple - stay within your skill set 
    • Branding is huge - she hired someone to help get the brand together because this was important to her
    • Design and source branded marketing materials 
    • Make it easy for customers and businesses or they won't sign up - welcome package (stickers, postcards, stamp,  passport, and a one-pager of what to do)
    • Tell everyone about it - tap into your best customers so they can be your cheerleader 
    • Look at the town and county for resources or state grant for funding.
    • Ask participants to throw in a small amount 
    • Your biggest resource is other businesses
• This has been done before, don't under estimate the power of your customer base, these businesses are colleagues not competitors

We would like to give our sincere thanks to Jessie McNaughton for providing her time and valuable insights on the NY Fiber Trail. You can learn more about the NY Fiber Trail by visiting their website.  

You can view the recording below and her slide deck here.